How to Become a Better Teacher

Posted by Dorit Sasson Jun 6, 2007

I always say that experience is the best teacher. Unfortunately, experience in the classroom has had to work in odd ways.

The success of my personal journey was all about a series of ups and downs.

Often at times, I am faced with impatient parents, troubling and sometimes difficult students and a system that often goes only so far as to support a teacher.

Within this sytem, I have found the only way to cope by keeping a personal journal. Now that I am due for a sabbatical next year, I find myself comforted by my early trials and tribulations and what I needed to do was to write about all that I saw happening around me including the students and lessons I taught.

It took me a very long time to learn to build a healthy dialogue with students, one that was not characterized by threats or frustration. The day finally came when I felt more comfortable in the classroom. Here's what was part of my overall recipe for my own personal survival and I guess you can say 'success':

• personalized experiences, short stories, excerpts
• humor and pictures
• using drama, funny expressions (depending on the context)
• using my own jam and music style
• having fun and letting a bit of spontaneity in the classroom

But the real heart lay at relating as much of the time as possible to each student as an individual. Behind each kid's pestering jokes and snide and sometimes annoying comments, was a kid who really wanted to learn. I tried in spite of all this, to give each student a feeling of belonging in the language learning classroom

And here's what else helped me:

• a good supportive group of [online] teachers
• a balanced lifestyle
• a good night's sleep
• lots of exercises
• stacks of books